didn't have ordinary shoes. I wore sandals. I was assured by Ben that the hike was used by families and wasn't supposed to be that hard and that I should be ok in my trusy Reef sandals. Yea. Sure. So on Saturday morning at 8am (we were supposed to leave at 7!!) the five of us, Jennifer, Theresa, Ben, Rob, and myself, set out on our adventure. But wait! We had a pit-stop first. We had to go to the Ala Moana Shopping Center to change busses so meanwhile, we went to St. Germain's bakery to get some breakfast. We then waited for our bus for almost an hour because it only comes once every hour. Then we had a nice long ride out to Kahana which wasn't so bad because the company was good :)We started out on a nice paved road that led to the trailhead. We were planning to do the loop which would take us past the Kahana river and to some very nice pools that you can swim in. Well even before we hit the trail the rain started drizzling down. No one had the foresight to bring an umbrella (which would've been useless on the trail anyways) or a poncho so we resigned ourselves to getting a little damp. Well, I must say that a little damp was a complete understatement! As soon as we got in to the forest, the heavens opened up and dumped gallons of rain down on our unsuspecting heads! We walked past trees that had little waterfalls coming down their trunks, branches hanging down that poured water like they were showerheads, and let's not even get started on the trail. It was a mass of mud and fallen palm fronds. "Oh, how nice!" you might be thinking of the palm fronds. Oh no. These were palm fronds from the devil! They had spikes running along the edges, and if you recall from my previous comments, I (stupid stupid me) was wearing sandals because I didn't have any shoes! I'm sure you can picture sufficiently how my feet must've looked after the adventure.
Well we continued on, palm fronds, rain and all and pretty soon we looked like a bunch of drowned rats. Here are some pics to prove that I can rough it and I don't need to have makeup and dry hair 24/7 :)
In the front is Ben, then Rob, me, and Theresa. Jennifer took this pic and when Rob uploaded it to the internet, I stole it. I actually got most of these pics from them because my camera got fogged up and I couldn't take any more pics without everyone looking all blurry. This is right where we were crossing a small stream, of which there were many. By this time we were all completely soaked and dripping wet. We'd put on sunscreen and but spray and so when the rain started, we were all slimy as it all washed off. Attractive, haha! 
Here we are again, this time with Jennifer in the picture, and you can better tell how soaked we got. We were on our way to the river that we had to cross to get to the pools. On the way there we met up with a guy and his little boy and he told us that the river was impassable and that we should just turn back. Well that was definitely a challenge for us and we decided to give it a go! He told us that three of his buddies were over there trying to get across but he didn't think they'd have much success. So we continued on, sure that we younger, more intelligent college students would have the brains to figure out a way to cross this "impassable" river. Then about 10 minutes later we came upon his friends. They told us they couldn't do it and wished us luck. Even better! Now this was really going to happen! We were determined that the river should not deter us from swimming in our pools of water, and really, who can resist a challenge like that? Plus we didn't really think the river would be that large and fast. 
Here is a picture of that rushing river we were determined to cross. That small shore on the opposite side is where we were supposed to end up at if it hadn't been for the torrent of water. So Ben grabbed a stick and pushed it into the river to check depth. A no go. The bottom was way down there and we couldn't even feel it. Obviously we couldn't cross at this point so we moved to the left, through trees and a lot of undergrowth until we got to a spot where there was a young falled tree that went about half way across the river, and on the other side another tree had its branches out over it so you could grab on and haul yourself the rest of the way over. Now this tree was kind of thin and bendy and didn't support weight all that well. First Ben got in the river and made it about 3/4 of the way across. Rob started to follow, made it 1/2 way, and came back. So I gave it a go (mom, don't yell). I took off my sandals so I wouldn't lose them and stepped in to it about waist deep. The river was fast, really really fast, and the footing wasn't all that great either. I held on to the tree and got to the 1/2 way point without major incident. Then things got tricky. It got deeper, slipperier, and faster as you kept going and I knew that I had to turn back. Meanwhile Ben was still clutching the tree and the branches waiting to come back to our side. I made it after slipping a little at the end and now it was Ben's turn. The point of the tree he was hanging on to was the very end and it was really bendy to the point where it didn't offer a lot of support for a human body. Rob and I grabbed our part of the tree and leaned back as far as we could to make sure that it didn't keep bending down river, drowning Ben in the process. Rob's branch quickly broke so he had to hang on with me and we were both leaning back as far as we could against the current. Finally Ben made it back to our side and we decided that yes, the river is impassable.
We began our long trek back through the mud, evil palm fronds, and low-lying branches and about an hour and a half later we made it to relatively drier land. Everyone got out the food, passed it around, and ate before we headed to the bus stop. The beach was pretty, even though it was still raining, and if I hadn't been so dead I would've wanted to go for a swim!
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